Conventional earth working devices include such machines as first planers, diggers, trenchers or borers. In order to lay a pipe or cable underground engineers most commonly dig a trench, remove the earth to a temporary location, lay the pipe or cable in the trench and then back fill the trench with the earth from the temporary location. Conventional trench cutters use the same components to cut the trench as to remove the earth from the trench. Furthermore the trench cutting is performed in one pass to the full depth of the trench. Optionally the pipe or cable is laid simultaneously with the cutting procedure. This requires relatively substantial machines even for the smallest trenches. A second machine is then required to fill the earth back into the trench over the inserted pipe or cable. Invariably this means that the earth constituents of the trench are required to be stored somewhere or transported away and in most cases mixed up. Therefore one is left with a line of subsoil on the surface which looks unsightly and is difficult to manage.
A previous attempt to provide a solution to this problem is described in SU19256. SU19256 describes a cable laying machine consisting of several tiers of inclined cutting blades for breaking up and loosening the soil, of belt conveyors for transporting it rearwards, and of includes surfaces for lowering the soil back into the trench, the cable being simultaneously unwound and laid below the middle part of the machine.
There has now been devised an earth working apparatus which overcomes or substantially mitigates the above-mentioned and/or disadvantages associated with the prior art.